contributor to

contributor to

breakfast outside
a neighbor on his cellphone
across the street
Frankie’s last tears as we
pull away from “home”

The boat pulls away from the bayside dock. Our guide points out the history of Assateague Island’s origins (a 1933 storm broke it off the peninsula) and points out fishing vessels docked at West Ocean City, across the bay. He explains the ponies as we head south in the bay, as well as the perils of mansion-building near marshes. The boat docks on the island. We disembark onto the beach and bathe our feet in the bay water. After many attempts, Frankie catches one small fish using the crabbing net the crew gave all the passengers—right before we embark.

switching seats
Assateague’s grazing ponies
fade from view

The drive north more of his tears as we reenter Delaware

Bethany Beach has a charming downtown that ends at a simple boardwalk. Upscale stores and restaurants cater to a more gentrified crowd. The dunes eclipse the beach and ocean from a boardwalk flanked only with beach condos. More Cape May-esque than Ocean City, and after all the bustle of OC, Bethany is almost too quiet.

Rehoboth—twelve miles north—does not have that problem. A far larger downtown displays gaudier shops and eateries filled with far more people than Bethany. A more Ocean City-looking boardwalk with fewer people, Rehoboth manages to strike a happy medium between OC’s bustle and Bethany’s tranquility. Breaking with sea food again, we have a gyro lunch at a four-star Mediterranean grill before leaving these beach resorts behind.

Scortching heat savoring a taste of gyro in air conditioning

A drive through Wilmington and Dover. The latter, a quaint capital with a picturesque downtown more like Main Street USA than a center of state government. The former bustles with culture, commerce and respectable size as Delaware’s largest city.

I applaud your reworking of the haibun form; it’s very cool. I like to add tankas, and other stanzas where the linebreaks move all over the page, then add a standard paragraph before the final haiku. I feel for poor Frankie.